Histoire d’une vie, Histoire de silences : une poétique de la mémoire

Abstract

One of the most original features of the writer Aharon Appelfeld is his writing of silence. Or rather of silences, since according to the words which make them resonate, they offer multiple textures : the blissful silence of a contemplative mother, the concentrated rapt silence of men in prayer, the inner whispers of a lonely child, the stuffed throat of the chased child, the silent cinema of horrific scenes, the hidden Jewishness, the aphasia of the survivor or the thick silence springing out of a German word and thus reviving past memories.Among all these non-languages, silenced languages, languages to be learnt and languages to forget, the naked writing of Aharon Appelfeld struggles its way through. His style—the inscription of the words and of the nothingness from which they originate—reconstructs an identity and gives a voice to the writer despite the exile, the loss of the homeland, of the languages and of the loved ones who used to speak them. This contribution shall attempt to update some of the stakes of this writing of silence.

Keywords

• silence
• witness
• literary genres
• poetics of memory
• mother tongue
• identity